Gilbert Arenas’ NBA money story started with a mistake that sounds almost impossible in hindsight. Before he had even truly arrived in the league, he had already burned through roughly $300,000 to $400,000 on the belief that a big rookie payday was coming.
Arenas laid out the whole thing on the Ball in the Family podcast, and the details are wild. He talked about buying a fake chain, choosing the cubic version with white gold, and adding on an Escalade and TVs. By his own account, the spending added up fast.
“I spent all my money. A fake chain.
‘Cause, you know, back then they had the long chain, and then you had the big initials, the medallion. So the diamond one would’ve been like three, four hundred thousand.
Cubic was ten. So I went with the cubic with the white gold.
I didn’t want platinum there, but then that made it expensive too. And then there was Escalade.
TVs that came with that money. I spent about, like, $300,000, $400,000, you know, coming into the draft.
And my check was $300,000 the first year. It was rough.”
That mistake left him in a brutal spot once the real contract numbers came into focus. Arenas said the fallout meant sleeping in the gym, eating on the plane, and living on a tiny monthly budget.
“Loans? I was sleeping in the gym.
I was eating off of the plane. Oh yeah, that was all me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s all me… It was rough my first two years, though. But it actually helped me hone in on basketball because I had nothing else to do.
I didn’t have no money, couldn’t go nowhere. Couldn’t, because I had to budget for two years because I already spent the first-year money.
So I had, like, 500 bucks a month, free money.”
He said the math was simple and ugly. Back then, the paychecks were smaller, and the money he thought he had already disappeared before he really got to use it.
“Think about it. We got paid back then 300, like 300, 400.
So I spent 300 real dollars. So that’s like 600,000, right?
So all my next-year money was gone. So I needed a two-year deal.
So I can, so gas, I had to, like, really. I sleep at the gym in the locker room, movie theater room.”
That financial mess traces back to draft night. Arenas was expected to go in the first round after leaving Arizona in 2001, but he slid to No. 31 and was taken by the Golden State Warriors with the first pick of the second round. Without the security that comes with a higher draft slot, he started out on a two-year deal worth about $825,000.
The result was a strange, stripped-down beginning for a player who would eventually become one of the league’s biggest earners. Arenas said he had to live on around $500 a month, keep an eye on gas money, and stick close to the Warriors facility instead of living like a typical young pro with cash to burn.
The strange part is that he sees that rough stretch as a turning point. With almost no room for distractions, he locked in on basketball. That focus showed up quickly: in his second season, he averaged 18.3 points, 6.3 assists, and 4.7 rebounds, and won the 2003 NBA Most Improved Player Award.
From there, the money finally caught up. Arenas left Golden State for the Washington Wizards in 2003 and signed a six-year deal worth about $64 million.
Five years later, Washington gave the three-time All-Star another six-year contract, this one worth about $111 million. By the end of his career, he had made more than $163 million in salary.
So the beginning of Arenas’ financial life in the NBA was about as far from glamorous as it gets: hundreds of thousands spent before the real money arrived, then months of sleeping in the gym and surviving on roughly $500 a month.
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